Bogomil Balkansky, VMware's senior vice president of cloud infrastructure products, told CRN the acquisition will give VMware and its partners "the ability to extend virtual networking across any cloud platform."

The Nicira acquisition gives VMware access to clouds using OpenStack's platform, the leading alternative to VMware's vSphere. Balkansky confirmed that once the deal is done VMware will begin mapping out which technologies can be leveraged from both its existing platform and Nicira's, which could perhaps hint at future integration.